302 Apparent objections to the Glacial Theory. 



actually traversed by dibes and beds of igneous rocks, whose former 

 state of fusion is a proof that they must have been rapidly forced 

 upwards ; and besides which, it sometimes happens, that fragments 

 of a low-seated rock, have been carried upwards and imbedded in a 

 superior stratum, and it seems quite impossible, that such pheno- 

 mena could have been produced by a gentle and gradual uprise. 



Water, therefore, would appear to have been the agent by which 

 detritus has been accumulated, and its fragments rounded, and the 

 very arrangement of these fragments in a decreasing ratio as to size 

 and quantity as we proceed farther from the parent rock, affords 

 evidence which is at variance with glacial action. " M. Elie de 

 Beaumont has shewn, that in the valley of the Durance, the blocks 

 decrease in volume and become less angular as they recede from the 

 mountains behind Gap, until the transported matter diminished to 

 the pebbles constituting the wide extent of country known as the 

 Crau. Similar facts are also observable down other valleys. Per- 

 haps in the loess of the Rhine, we may trace the remains of still finer 

 detritus, which has accumulated to the depth of 200 or 300 feet 

 above the valley, and bears evident marks of sudden transport. 

 The supposition is rendered more probable by the abundance of 

 Alpine pebbles discovered resting on various rocks, where the loess 

 ceases in the higher parts of the valley of the Rhine, and which 

 have apparently been accumulated by a sudden rush of water down 

 the valley. The other great accumulation of erratic blocks seems 

 due to some more general cause, since not only are the blocks scat- 

 tered in great abundance over Northern Europe, in a manner to 

 shew their northern origin, but those which occur in the northern 

 parts of America, apparently in equal abundance, also point to a 

 similar origin. We hence infer, that some cause, situated in the 

 polar regions, has so acted as to produce this dispersion of solid 

 matter over a certain portion of the earth's surface. We know of 

 no agent capable of causing the effect required, but moving water. 

 —De la Beche's Theor. Geol. p. 389. 



With regard to Dr. Buckland's statement, that a glacier once des- 

 cended from Shap Fells, and crossed the valley of the Eden, it ap- 

 pears to me that the desire to establish the theory, has in great mea- 

 sure led him to overlook the fact, that the physical conformation 





